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🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, May 2, 2017 05:58 PM UTC:

Regarding your concern about the rook I've said that it's a average piece as strength goes. That is used in the pawn promotion rules. But maybe instead of major, average, minor I could use strong, medium, weak. The first way sound more professional to me though.

The use of technical terms may sound more professional to those who don't know what they mean, but their misuse sounds more amateurish to those who actually do know what they mean. So, it is important to use such terms accurately.

About the weird endgame conditions is that I want to reward someone who forces a stalemate, or at least finishes with non neglijible extra material. For example in apothecary chess 2 an king+zebra+camel vs king is an advantage as I think we should reward a bit a player who collected 2 extra minor pieces, otherwise it would be a draw.

I would recommend dropping the point counting and the advantages and disadvantages. The goal of the game should always be checkmate, not in racking up consolation prizes when you can't meet that goal. The value of a piece should be determined only by the role it can play in helping to checkmate the opponent. But a point counting system that gives an advantage to a player with more pieces in a draw could throw off the calculations of piece value. And if the game ends in a draw despite one player having more pieces, that's evidence that he doesn't know how to use them well, which doesn't seem to merit a reward. In general, counting points adds a distraction that shouldn't be part of the game.

Anyway if this bothers one much, he/she should find consolation in the fact that is a rare occurance. I doubt the advantage/disadvantage situation will occur often, but anyway it should be taken care of.

I come at games from a holistic perspective in which overcomplicated rules that add little value to the game should be shed no matter how rare their application is.


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